The Effectiveness of Filial Therapy on Sedentary Behaviors in Children with Specific Learning Disorder

Children with special learning disorders (SLD) have low physical activity and high sedentary behaviors. The purpose of the present study was to investigate the effectiveness of Filial Therapy on sedentary behaviors (SB) in children with SLD. The research method was semi-experimental (pre-test, post-test, follow up with Placebo and control group). The statistical population of this study consisted of 116 mothers of SLD children aged 7 to 11 years in Malayer city. Among mothers, 95 mothers (91.90%) rated their child's sedentary behavior above the cut-off point (700 minutes or 12 hours and 7 minutes per week, Fischer et al, 2012). Of these mothers, 42 were randomly assigned to the experimental (12), placebo (12) and control (12) groups. Child weekly screen time scale (watching TV, tablet and so on) was used to assess the SB. Group Filial Therapy in 10 two-hour sessions was performed for the experimental group. The Placebo group received weekly information on SLD and participated in question-answer sessions, and the control group received no training. The analysis of variance with repeated measure and Bonferroni post-hoc test were used for analyzing the data. The results showed that the Filial Therapy had a significant effect on decreasing the SB (during the week and the weekend) compared to Placebo and the control group. But there was no significant difference between scores of the placebo group in post-test and follow-up compared to the control group. According to the results, Filial Therapy is recommended to reduce SB in students, especially students with SLD.